Reason is just another faith

IN 1960 Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India, wrote&colon; “It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, of a rich country inhabited by starving people… The future belongs to science and to those who make friends with science.”

This was doubtless intended as a manifesto for reason, but it also sums up a major justification people have for objecting to reason. Such pronouncements were …